Page 341 - vanity-fair

truant’s return. Nothing occurred during dinner-time ex-
cept smiling Mr. Frederick’s flagging confidential whispers,
and the clinking of plate and china, to interrupt the silence
of the repast. The servants went about stealthily doing their
duty. Mutes at funerals could not look more glum than the
domestics of Mr. Osborne The neck of venison of which he
had invited Dobbin to partake, was carved by him in per-
fect silence; but his own share went away almost untasted,
though he drank much, and the butler assiduously filled his
glass.
At last, just at the end of the dinner, his eyes, which had
been staring at everybody in turn, fixed themselves for a
while upon the plate laid for George. He pointed to it pres-
ently with his left hand. His daughters looked at him and
did not comprehend, or choose to comprehend, the signal;
nor did the servants at first understand it.
‘Take that plate away,’ at last he said, getting up with an
oath— and with this pushing his chair back, he walked into
his own room.
Behind Mr. Osborne’s dining-room was the usual apart-
ment which went in his house by the name of the study; and
was sacred to the master of the house. Hither Mr. Osborne
would retire of a Sunday forenoon when not minded to go
to church; and here pass the morning in his crimson leather
chair, reading the paper. A couple of glazed bookcases were
here, containing standard works in stout gilt bindings. The
‘Annual Register,’ the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ ‘Blair’s Ser-
mons,’ and ‘Hume and Smollett.’ From year’s end to year’s
end he never took one of these volumes from the shelf; but

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